All You Need Is Love

When Nicki was a little girl, I stood her in front of a mirror and had her say “I like myself. I love myself.” At first she couldn’t do it.

But I persisted, smiling and teasing, and finally she did. And although halting at first, in a few minutes she was laughing and chanting “I LIKE myself! I LOVE myself!” And she was the happiest I’d ever seen her.

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I have talked with many severely depressed or suicidal people. People who see only paleness in the world, who believe the basic nature of humanity is evil. People who have been abused or neglected, or crippled by discrimination.

And not one of them could convincingly, simply say “I love myself.” None of them could visualize the child they were, cradled safely in their arms.

Many believed the lie that they had never been loved, never been nurtured (this is not possible: infants who are not nurtured DIE. It is called “failure to thrive”). And therefore, with no access to such loving memories, actually build an identity around being evil, disgusting, broken.

And when they were personal clients, and I could put them into trance and move past the ego shields to reveal the loving wounded heart, help them visualize that helpless infant, connect them with their core survival drives or their sense of spiritual connection —

Everything changes.

When they CAN look in the mirror, and happily say “I love myself!” When they can believe they are made of the same…